Disclosure: I work in the oil industry and have worked for ExxonMobil in the past. ExxonMobil may be the world's largest publicly traded oil company, but it is

Disclosure: I work in the oil industry and have worked for ExxonMobil in the past. ExxonMobil may be the world's largest publicly traded oil company, but it is nowhere near the largest oil producer, nor does it have the the largest reserves. These honours go to the state-owned oil companies eg. saudi aramco, PDVSA (venezuela), NIOC (iran), CNPC (china), kuwait petroleum, etc. To give an example, in 2004, saudi aramco had proven oil reserves of 261 billion barrels, iran, iraq had around 130 billion each. Meanwhile exxon had 22 billion. Even the state-owned comapnies in nigeria, qatar and libya have more proven reserves than exxon. My take on this: the rhetoric seems to be about return on capital, and betting on high future oil prices. But I strongly suspect the real reason for ExxonMobil not producing more oil (and the story alluded to this) is that there haven't been any major new fields discovered to grow beyond replacing their existing depleted fields. Also, the large new discoveries have typically been deepwater, which is difficult and expensive with current technology. In my experience with Exxon, they are astute managers when it comes to their investments, but ultimately they are an oil company. Unlike most of the other big oil players (BP, Shell, Chevron, Total), Exxon has openly said that it is in the oil and gas business only and won't diversify to alternative energy sources (eg. BP has started tagging their brand Beyond Petroluem with investments in ethanol and other renewables). So I certainly don't think they are holding off on projects simply to leverage higher prices in future.